POLICE have retrieved a body suspected to be missing French tourist Aurelie Lhorme from the base of remote cliffs on the state’s Far West Coast.

The body is expected to be formally identified within two days.

Officers who abseiled down the 80m cliffs made the grim discovery while searching for the 30-year-old solo traveller on Monday evening.

Police have contacted her family in France to notify them of the discovery.

Ms Lhorme, from Toulouse in France’s south, was last seen on Saturday night, sitting in the silver Toyota Camry she had been driving. It was parked just off an access road, on the wrong side of a locked gate, about 10km from the Head of Bight whale watching centre.

The car was in the same place on Sunday morning, about three hours west of Ceduna on the state’s Far West Coast, but Ms Lhorme had vanished.

Her personal belongings, including a mobile phone, wallet and passport were still in the locked car, and her keys were found on top of a tyre.

In Adelaide, Yasmina Tadic said her friend had told people she was travelling to Alice Springs.

‘We all assumed that she was going to Alice Springs and that she had got a lift. We don’t know who the person was,” she said. “I did not expect her to leave so quickly.”

Ms Tadic said she was shocked at Ms Lhorme’s disappearance. “She definitely likes adventure, she likes to take a risk,” she said.

Another friend, Sophie Calderbank, said Ms Lhorme was “pretty cluey” and was well-travelled.

“She is careful, who knows what happened,” she said.

Staff at the visitors centre spoke to Ms Lhorme when she appeared to be sleeping in her car on an access road leading to Head of Bight.

Brian Wiese told The Advertiser that he saw Ms Lhorme asleep in her car on Saturday night, but she was not there when he checked again on Sunday morning.

“There was no sign that the car was broken into, it was still locked,” Mr Wiese said.

Nullarbor Road House co-manager Rod Parkes said checks of the roadhouse guest logs showed Ms Lhorme had not booked a room in her name, and he was not sure if she had stopped at the roadhouse.

He said it was dark in the area by about 7.30pm and if Ms Lhorme had gone for a walk in the darkness in the hope of capturing one of the coastline’s spectacular sunsets or sunrises from the cliff face, it would have been difficult to discern which way she was going.

“Once the horizon drops you don’t know which way you are going,” he said.

He said the fence line where her car was parked, which is part of the Yalata Indigenous Protected Area, would have been the only guide to the Head of Bight Whale Watching Centre, 10km from where her locked car was left.

“(On Sunday) night there was a bit of drizzle around and it was quite cold, so she still would have been in a bit of trouble,” he said.

Earlier yesterday, Ceduna-based Detective Sergeant Justin Leverington said police and emergency services crews — including STAR Group officers and a police plane — were searching for Ms Lhorme at the base of the Head of Bight.

“It is in the vicinity of where Ms Lhorme was last seen,” he said. “The base of the cliff will be searched as a result of an unconfirmed sighting of a body at the base.”

A crime scene investigator from Port Lincoln yesterday fingerprinted Ms Lhorme’s car and its contents, including a Mt Franklin water bottle before the car was loaded on to a tow truck and escorted away, just before noon.

Police also want to speak with a couple seen in a Jayco motorhome near Head of Bight, west of Ceduna, around the time Ms Lhorme was last seen.

Police believe Ms Lhorme may have had contact with the occupants of the Jayco before she slept in her car on Saturday night.

It is believed she was in France a fortnight ago, but had planned to return to Australia and find work.

In a comment posted on her Facebook page on April 4, Ms Lhorme said she was in France and “flying back to Australia next week, back to work, I’ll find hopefully”.